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Photos: Inverdoorn Game Reserve

This portion of our trip was ‘sponsored’ by Susan and Terry Akers. Thanks for everything, guys!

After having an amazing time in, around, and outside of Cape Town, mom, Terry, Danielle and I headed 3 hours outside the city to Inverdoorn Game Reserve and Safari Lodge. We spent one night and had two game drives while we were there, one in the afternoon on day 1, and one at sunrise on day 2. The lodge was pretty nice, the food was good, and we had a great time. Instead of boring you with the play-by-play, I’ll just let the pictures do the talking. Click on any of them to see a full-size image. Enjoy!

Heading out on our first game drive in the afternoon. The “roads” in the reserve were pretty rugged.

The first animal we came across was this Elephant. He walked right by our vehicle, passing about 10 inches from my face.

Just after our first encounter, the same elephant in better lighting.

The elephants like to follow the roads for some reason.

After the elephant excitement, we saw some cheetahs!

Another cheetah.

Inverdoorn operates a cheetah rehab program for animals rescued from “breeders”. Unable to be returned to the wild, they nevertheless let them run down this long track. It was an amazing experience – they are so fast! Click to zoom in.

After the cheetahs, we went in search of giraffes. They proved to be the most camera-shy, running away whenever we got close.

On our way to look for some rhinos, we encountered a group of Zebras. Most were a bit too far away for our camera, but this guy was standing about 35 feet from us.

Rhino. Sadly, they have to lure their rhinos to a specific spot every afternoon using this hay so that they can follow them around all night to protect them from poachers.

Toward the end of the drive, we were off to enjoy some outdoor snacks and warm beverages, and we ran into our elephant friends again.

It was cold! Like 50 degrees and very windy. We bundled up and enjoyed our warm sangria and snacks at the end of the drive.

Day two: we were up early to enjoy a sunrise game drive.

One of our elephant friends. You an see he’s missing a tusk – he is also a rescued animal. The downed trees in the background were felled by the elephants. If they can’t reach the top branches, they just pull the whole tree down.

Demonstrating the incredible reach of those trunks.

A lone impala. Possibly the only animals more skittish than the giraffes.

Blue wildebeest grazing in the early morning mist.

Zebra and springbok sharing breakfast.

A kudu bull wandering alone at sunrise.

This is Velvet. She was injured as a cub and cannot survive in the wild. She’s been domesticated.